I recently took a webinar about Evernote and the presenter asked the audience how many people use IFTTT. I use it all the time, but I was surprised to see that most of my fellow audience members hadn't even heard about it.
Folks, if you don't know about IFTTT (https://ifttt.com), take a seat. You're going to love this!
IFTTT originally stood for IF This Then That. (They've since shortened it to just IFTTT.) It allows you to connect two applications (or an application and a product) together so they'll run seamlessly, with no additional work on your part. So, if Thing One happens, then Thing Two automatically happens.
You can use it to connect your social media accounts, to automatically alert you when snow is predicated, to send you a text when a certain person emails, etc.... The possibilities are endless!
In fact, there are so many possibilities (there are 220 apps and products that you can connect), one might find it a bit overwhelming to use at first. Never fear -- we picked the top 15 recipes that would be useful to any librarian ("Recipes" is what you make when you connect two apps/products together):
PERSONAL ASSISTANT
Keep track of receipts, invoices, and orders with these two options!Who is going to come to your program if snow is on its way?
Order something important for your program? Get shipping updates on your phone.
Keeping track of Reference Interviews, interlibrary loans, people using computers? Here's a fun one.
STREAMLINING SOCIAL MEDIA
You can connect most of your social media networks together, but be careful. You wouldn't use Twitter hashtags on Facebook and you wouldn't post as often on Facebook as you would Twitter. So, pay attention to the best uses of each social network and connect appropriately.Plan out your tweets on a shared Google Calendar!
I wouldn't send all your Instagram photos to Facebook, but the ones you want, just include a special hashtag on Instagram and it'll immediately appear on Facebook!
Make your library's blog posts go social on all accounts (make a recipe for each of your social networks) as soon as you hit send!
Upload photos only once and it'll appear on all social networks!
One profile picture for all, uploaded just once...
FINDING NEW PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Easily people who are tweeting with local hashtags (like your city) with this recipe -- it puts all users onto a list (which can be public or private) and you can easily reply, like or retweet local patrons WITHOUT following them.What are your patrons posting on Instagram? Find out with this useful daily digest!
FUN ONES
You can make a recipe for Android or IOS!Does your SO never know when you're heading home because you leave at different times? This recipe is for you:
So, we hope you'll find some of these recipes useful and will become comfortable with using this program to make some of your own recipes. If you use any others, please share the URL in the comments so other readers may also benefit from your great find!
Contact info for Jess???
ReplyDeleteHi PW, you can email me at jess [at] 5minlib.com. You can also DM me on Twitter @5minlib. I look forward to hearing from you!
DeleteI wish there was an IFTTT that went from Facebook to Instagram. I know that you included Instagram to Facebook but I have not seen one the other way. Am I just missing it?
ReplyDeleteHi Patty, no you aren't missing it. Instagram's terms of use does not allow 3rd party apps to store usernames and passwords, so IFTTT can't automatically post for you. (This is the only social media network that has this restriction...) Your best option will be posting on IG and having it redirect to Facebook... If you are hoping to use a computer (and not a phone) to upload images onto IG, I use Gramblr (http://gramblr.com/uploader/) all the time for that. You need to have the image the correct size, but it's nice to be able to use a fancy camera. You can also use something like Latergramme (https://www.latergram.me/) to schedule your posts, though since they can't post for you, all they will do is keep it in draft mode and send you a reminder to make them live. Good luck!
Delete